I’m Still Looking For The Union Label

By Lynn Wolfe

While growing up in New York City, I remember a television commercial that supported labor unions. Many years later, I can still hear those women singing, “Look for the Union Label . . . .,” in TV Ads like the one posted at the bottom of this article.
However, somewhere along the years, these valuable jobs were exported to China and Viet Nam because Americans wanted inexpensive merchandise that came in a store with “Mart” in its name.

We had a President in the 80s (shockingly, a one-time Union President himself) who had very little respect for the type of American workers who showered after work, not before, and the anti-union movement started gathering steam.

Fast -forward to our current news cycle and the war against organized labor continues. So I decided to take a little stroll down memory lane and revisit some of the everyday-things that unions are responsible for.

• Weekends
• 40-hour work week
• Unemployment insurance
• Safe working conditions
• Medical benefits
• Sick days

Quite frankly, these are a few of my favorite – and necessary - things. Therefore, I’m going to make an attempt to look for the union label during my shopping excursions. I’m also going to hug a teacher and thank the next Teamster I come across.

Clasaic Union Ad Firefighter Mike DeGarmo, criticizing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for refusing to drop his assault on public employee bargaining rights.

Editorial note: Americans decisively support laws ensuring the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions by a nearly two-to-one margin, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll.

Sixty-one percent said they oppose legislation stripping those rights in their states, as compared to only thirty-three percent who said they favor such laws, a striking discrepancy that shows public opinion firmly on one side of a growing national fight. The wide poll margin undercuts Republican claims that the American people want to outlaw labor unions.

Poor, Middle Class To Pay For Tax Breaks For Rich, Corporations

Think Progress: State budgets across the country are in disarray as a weak economy, the end of tens of billions in Recovery Act funds, and a GOP-led House that is pushing for deep cuts to many programs that benefit state and local governments set the stage for massive in shortfalls over the next two years.

These misplaced priorities mean that the poor and middle class will shoulder the burden of fiscal austerity, even as the rich and corporations are asked to contribute even less. Here’s a detailed look at how the GOP’s war on the poor and middle class is playing out at the state level:

Texas: As ThinkProgress has reported, Gov. Perry spent the last two years traveling around the country attacking the stimulus and other Obama administration initiatives, all while touting the “Texas Miracle” (low taxes, low services, and low regulations). However, as Matt Yglesias noted, “It looks like the secret behind Texas’ ability to avoid the kind of budget woes that afflicted so many states last year was two-year budgeting rather than the miracle of low-tax, low-service, lax-regulation policies.” Moreover, Perry relied more on the stimulus than any other state to fill his 2010 budget gap, with stimulus funds plugging a full 97 percent of the gap.

In facing down a $25 billion budget crisis on par with that of California, Perry categorically rejected any tax increases. Texas, as Paul Krugman said, already takes a “hard, you might say brutal, line toward its most vulnerable citizens,” as indicated by its poor educational performance and sky-high 25 percent child poverty rate. Still, Perry also refuses to use any of the $9.4 billion in the state’s rainy day fund (some of which, ironically, comes from stimulus funds intended to help states stave off draconian cuts that Perry instead squirreled away) and is instead contemplating deep cuts to child services programs and education, among other things. Perry even floated a plan to drop Medicaid entirely. Perry’s proposed education cuts are so deep that they prompted an unlikely source to take to the pages of the Houston Chronicle to write in opposition to them — none other than former First Lady Laura Bush. Bond ratings agency Standard & Poors has also weighed in, saying Texas’ cuts-only approach “won’t solve the state’s long-term fiscal problems” and that revenue increases need to be considered alongside the deep cuts being proposed.

Wisconsin: Gov. Scott Walker first gained national headlines for joining Ohio’s Kasich in a future-losing decision to cancel an $800 million investment — fully paid for the by the federal government — in high-speed rail. This decision prompted train manufacturer Talgo to announce it was leaving the state and will likely cost the state thousands of jobs.

Walker is of course now famous for his high-stakes war against Wisconsin’s workers. Walker has used a very small short-term shortfall and larger shortfall to come (which is still smaller than shortfalls the state has faced in recent years) to move forward with an unpopular plan to destroy the state’s public employee unions. As Ezra Klein and many others have noted, Wisconsin’s unions aren’t to blame for the state’s budget problems and taking away their collective bargaining rights will have no impact on the state’s fiscal situation.

Indeed, the unions offered to concede to all of Walker’s financial demands, so long as they could retain their collective bargaining rights. Walker balked at this offer, betraying his true motive: busting unions. Walker is also late in offering his budget, but it is believed that in spite of the supposed “crisis” and being “broke,” as Walker himself has said, his budget plans will include “a LOT more tax breaks” for the rich and corporations that will have to be balanced on the backs of workers or with painful cuts to state services and the state’s Medicaid programs, BadgerCare. It’s also worth noting that the last time Scott Walker went union busting, it turned into a massive boondoggle when he was overruled by an arbiter, wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars in the process. When Republican governors speak of “shared sacrifice,” it seems that the only thing they mean is sacrifices by the poor and middle class in order to fund massive tax breaks for the rich and corporations.

Read the complete story @ Think Progress

Voters Say Slash The Budget, But Not Anything In It

Texas Tribune insiders took on school finance this week, and they're not optimistic that there will be a happy ending:

Lawmakers have proposed spending $10.4 billion less than the Texas Education Agency says it needs to keep things running like they're running now. Is that current level of services sufficient for public education? Two-thirds of our panel said no, it's not.

On the question; Should lawmakers free local schools to raise their property taxes to make up for money lost to state cuts? Most of our insiders — 70 percent — said yes, while 27 percent said no.

More @ Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune this week also looked at the Mixed Signals on Budget Cuts that Texans are sending in a UT/Texas Tribune Poll:

By a margin of more than 2 to 1, Texas voters believe that lawmakers should solve the state's massive shortfall by cutting the budget, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, but their enthusiasm dissipates when asked if they support specific cuts.

"We [Texans] really want to slash the budget, but not anything in it," says pollster Daron Shaw, a professor of government at UT.

Given a list of things that could be cut to balance the budget and asked to check each that they'd consider, the voters were protective of state programs, and overwhelmingly so.

They oppose cuts to public education, 82 percent; pre-kindergarten, 62 percent; state grants to college students, 73 percent; state contributions to teacher and state employee retirement programs, 69 percent; the Children's Health Insurance Program, 87 percent; to state environmental regulation that could be picked up by the federal government, 65 percent; cuts to Medicaid providers like doctors and hospitals, 86 percent; state funding for nursing home care, 90 percent; prisons for adults or for juveniles, both 67 percent; new highway construction, 63 percent; border security, 85 percent; or for closing four community colleges, 77 percent.

Many of the items on that list are among the prime cuts made in proposed budgets from the House, the Senate and the governor. "Frankly, if you're assuming the results of the last election mean you should cut and that people meant government should completely go away, you're overreaching," says pollster Jim Henson, who teaches government and runs the Texas Politics Project at UT.

More @ Texas Tribune

This is, to me, a very Pavlovian thing. Pavlov conducted an experiment where for a period of time he rang a bell every time he set food down for his dogs. The dogs soon associated the bell with food and soon began to salivate as soon as they heard the bell, even when food was nowhere in sight.

It’s very easy to compare the techniques Pavlov used with his dogs to what the conservative noise machine has done to condition voters to the sound of "government spending."

When voters hear "government spending" their immediate conditioned response is "cut spending" without thinking that means their children will not receive a good education, their grandparents can't go to the doctor, potholes in roads (built by government spending) will go unfilled, there will be no prisons to hold the criminals who rob and kill, and on, and on, and on... When voters do stop to think about the GOP Price Tag attached to perpetual rounds of spending cuts they start to growl.

What Americans Really Want

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Funded by the Koch Bros.

You might also like Wisconsin: Scott Walker's Plan to Defund the Democratic Party Kochs Spent Big on EPA Foes Wisconsin: Protest Like An Egyptian? The Koch Brothers' Vast Right-Wing Media Conspiracy 'Bake Sales v. Billionaires: WI is an Existential Fight for Survival of the Democratic Party' Wisconsin Gov. Walker Ginned Up Budget Shortfall To Undercut Worker Rights Dems Closed Much Larger Budget Shortfall In Wisconsin Without Destroying Worker Rights Anti-Walker Protesters Outnumber Pro-Walker Showing How This Whole Wisconsin Budget 'Crisis' Came Down Wisconsin GOP Leader Rules Out Compromise On Unions

Mother Jones: Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker, whose bill to kill collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions has caused an uproar among state employees, might not be where he is today without the Koch brothers.

Charles and David Koch are conservative titans of industry who have infamously used their vast wealth to undermine President Obama and fight legislation they detest, such as the cap-and-trade climate bill, the health care reform act, and the economic stimulus package. For years, the billionaires have made extensive political donations to Republican candidates across the country and have provided millions of dollars to astroturf right-wing organizations.

Koch Industries' political action committee has doled out more than $2.6 million to candidates. And one prominent beneficiary of the Koch brothers' largess is Scott Walker.

According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker's gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election.

That donation was his campaign's second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch's PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used politicial maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits.

The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.

The Kochs also assisted Walker's current GOP allies in the fight against the public-sector unions. Last year, Republicans took control of the both houses of the Wisconsin state legislature, which has made Walker's assault on these unions possible. And according to data from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the Koch Industries PAC spent $6,500 in support of 16 Wisconsin Republican state legislative candidates, who each won his or her election.

Read the rest of the story at Mother Jones

Starving the [Government] Beast

"Starving the beast" is a fiscal-political strategy adopted by American conservatives in the 1970's to create or increase existing budget deficits via tax cuts to force future reductions in the size of government. The term "beast" refers to the government and the programs it funds, particularly social programs such as welfare, Social Security, Medicare and public schools. [see Forbes]

The term "starving the beast" to refer to the political-fiscal strategy was in a Wall Street Journal article in 1985 where the reporter quoted an unnamed Reagan staffer.

The tax cuts of former US President George W. Bush's administration, still in place, are an example. He said in 2001 "so we have the tax relief plan that now provides a new kind -- a fiscal straight jacket for Congress. And that's good for the taxpayers, and it's incredibly positive news if you're worried about a federal government that has been growing at a dramatic pace over the past eight years and it has been."

Former U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin expressly advocates the policy: "please Congress, starve the beast, don't perpetuate the problem, don't fund the largess, we need to cut taxes." U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, states "you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." Another well-known proponent of the strategy is activist Grover Norquist who famously said "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Starving the beast in Texas includes Governor Perry and the Republican-controlled Texas legislature proposing to cut up to $31 billion in spending from the next budget, without using any money from the $9 billion rainy day fund, to reduce government by firing tens of thousands of teachers, closing K-12 schools, closing of community colleges, eliminating tuition support for 60,000 college students, closing correctional facilities and drastic reducing state services for the poor, elderly, and young and for those with mental health problems.